Child, Lee – Without Fail

242

‘We’d have made a good team,’ she said. ‘We are a good

team. You should come back to Chicago with me.’

‘I’m a wanderer,’ he said.

‘OK, I won’t push,’ she said. ‘And look on the bright side with

Froelich. Cut her some slack. She’s probably worth it. She’s a

nice woman. Have some fun. You’re good together.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I guess.’

Neagley stood up and yawned.

‘You OK?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

Then she put a kiss on the tips of her fingers and blew it to

him from six feet away. Walked out of the room without saying

another word.

He was tired,-but he was agitated and the room was cold

and the bed was lumpy and he couldn’t sleep. So he put his

pants and shirt back on and walked to the closet and pulled

Joe’s box out. He didn’t expect to find anything of interest in it.

It would be abandoned stuff, that was all. Nobody leaves important

things in a girlfriend’s house when he knows he’s going to

skip out some day soon.

He put the box on the bed and pulled the flaps open. First

thing he saw was a pair of shoes. They were packed heel to

toe sideways across one end of the box. They were formal

black shoes, good leather, reasonably heavy. They had proper

stitched welts and toe caps. Thin laces in five holes. Imported,

probably. But not Italian. They were too substantial. British,

maybe. Like the air force tie.

He placed them on the bed cover. Put the heels six inches

apart and the toes a little farther. Th-e right heel was worn more

than the left. The shoes were fairly old, fairly battered. He could

see the whole shape of Joe’s feet in them. The whole shape of

his body, towering above them, like he was standing right there

wearing them, invisible. They were like a death mask.

There were three books in the box, packed edge up. One

was Du c6t de chez Swarm, which was the first volume of Marcel Proust’s , la recherche du temps perdu. It was a French

paperback with a characteristic severe plain cover. He leafed

through. He could manage the language, but the content

243

passed over his head. The second book was a college text about statistical analysis. It was heavy and dense. He leafed through

and gave up on both the language and the content. Piled it on

top of Proust on the bed.

He picked up the third book. Stared at it. He recognized it.

He had bought it for Joe himself, a long time ago, for his

thirtieth birthday. It was Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It

was in English, but he had bought it in Paris at a used-book

store. He could even remember exactly what it had cost, which

wasn’t very much. The Paris bookseller had relegated it to the

foreign-language section, and it wasn’t a first edition or anything.

It was just a nice-looking volume, and a great story.

He opened it to the flyleaf. He had written: Joe. Avoid both,

OK? Happy birthday. Jack. He had used the bookseller’s pen,

and the ink had smudged. Now it had faded a little. Then he

had written out an address label, because the bookseller had

offered to mail it for him. The address was the Pentagon back

then, because Joe was still in Military Intelligence when he was

thirty. The bookseller had been very impressed. The Pentagon,

Arlington, Virginia, USA.

He leafed past the title page to the first line: At the beginning

of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards

evening, a certain young man came down to the street from the

room he was renting. Then he leafed ahead, looking for the

axe murder itself, and a folded paper fell out of the book. It

was there as a bookmark, he guessed, about halfway through,

where Raskolnikov is arguing with Svidrigailov.

He unfolded the paper. It was army issue. He could tell by the

colour and the texture. Dull cream, smooth surface. It was

the start of a letter, in Joe’s familiar neat handwriting. The date

was six weeks after his birthday. The text said: Dear Jack,

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188

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